


Worth a Try

by meils121



Category: Leverage
Genre: Crying, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:35:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26055067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meils121/pseuds/meils121
Summary: Someone is crying.  That noise is a sob, someone gasping for air as they cry.  Parker doesn’t quite know what to do.  Do you say anything to someone who’s crying alone in their shower at three in the morning?  She doesn’t think so.  Still, it doesn’t feel quite right just to walk away.
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer
Comments: 14
Kudos: 109
Collections: The Leverage Exchange Master Collection





	Worth a Try

**Author's Note:**

  * For [poppetawoppet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/poppetawoppet/gifts).



It’s close to three in the morning when a faint noise wakes Parker up. Hardison - not nearly as light a sleeper as Parker - is still snoring softly beside her, but that’s not the noise she hears. It sounds like it’s coming from the bathroom. That’s weird, Parker thinks, as she gets up to investigate.

The bathroom - perhaps predictably - is empty. She can hear the shower in the apartment next door running, though. It’s a bit of a weird hour to be showering, she thinks, but it must have been the noise she heard. She’s about to head back to bed when she hears the noise again. Oh.

Someone is crying. That noise is a sob, someone gasping for air as they cry. Parker doesn’t quite know what to do. Do you say anything to someone who’s crying alone in their shower at three in the morning? She doesn’t think so. Still, it doesn’t feel quite right just to walk away. 

The shower shuts off before Parker can decide what to do. She can hear the person breathing unsteadily, but they seem to have stopped crying. And really, it’s not exactly her place to intrude. She creeps back to bed. 

It happens again, a few weeks later. Then again, only a few days after the second time. It soon becomes a regular occurance, those awful sobs. Parker doesn’t tell Hardison about them, not yet. She wants more intel first. 

She scouts the apartment. Their neighbor is a man who lives alone. He’s got long hair and a closed-off face and carries himself the way a person does when they’re expecting to get hurt. Parker knows, because Parker used to carry herself that way, before Hardison came into her life and taught her that she didn’t have to. No one’s taught that to this man. 

Parker waits until she sees the man drive away and then lets herself into his apartment through the window. It’s - depressing. There’s nothing that suggests anyone really lives here, just a mattress on the floor and a couple of boxes half-filled with stuff and a mostly empty fridge and a duffle bag with some clothes. There are no photos. There’s nothing happy, and Parker thinks maybe she’s starting to understand why this man cries alone in his shower in the middle of the night.

She tells Hardison about their neighbor the next time she hears him crying. Hardison tells her that next time he’d appreciate a heads up if she’s gonna break into a neighbor’s apartment, but he does some digging. 

“Eliot Spencer.” He says. “Looks like he’s a hired gun.” 

Parker considers this and wonders why a hired gun who won’t even buy a bed frame would rent an apartment in a nice neighborhood. 

\----------

Eliot winces as he lets himself into the apartment. He thinks, briefly, that he’s been living here for eight months and he should probably call it home by now. He doesn’t. Home hasn’t existed since he was eighteen and too full of pride to know what he was saying. 

This job was a bad one. He’s scared, if he’s being honest with himself, that he’s falling too deep into jobs that will make him into more of a monster than he already is. He looks at himself in the bathroom mirror. His face is gaunt. He supposes it’s because he’s been too depressed to think about eating much, let alone cooking the way he used to. He stares at his reflection and sees his mama’s eyes staring back at him and wonders where he went wrong. Then he wonders if he ever did anything right.

The shower is ice cold when he steps in. He doesn’t care enough to adjust the water temperature. He moves to grab the soap but the movement pulls at a sore muscle. Eliot loses his battle to keep whatever composure he had left. He starts crying now, no longer capable of holding back the pain. He’s in too deep and his heart is shattered and there’s nothing left even if he wanted to try and put things back together. 

\-----------

Parker doesn’t hear any noises - crying or otherwise - from next door for close to a month. She’s starting to wonder if their neighbor moved out. But then she’s up late one night, reading in bed while Hardison is playing a new video game. She hears Eliot, his sobs more heart wrenching than ever. 

“Alec?” She calls. “I think we should knock on his door.”

Hardison hesitates. They’ve had this conversation. He’s nervous about intervening, worried about what this man is capable of. He’s just as sad as Parker, though, to hear someone so in pain and the thought of not doing anything is unbearable. 

“Okay.” He says finally. “Let’s go.”

They wait for the shower to turn off. Parker’s the one who knocks on the door, soft at first and then a little more insistently when no one answers. The door finally swings open. 

Eliot’s more of a mess than Parker expected. His hair is damp but unwashed, falling in tangles around his face. He’s got some nasty bruises and a split lip and a nose that’s been broken too many times. He’s holding himself funny, like there are more injuries that are unseen. 

He doesn’t even question why they’re at his door. Maybe he’s done his own research, at some point. He just stares at them blankly for a minute and then turns around, returning into the darkness of the room beyond. Parker trails after him, Hardison at her heels. 

“We’re here to help.” Parker says to the darkness. It takes another moment for her eyes to adjust enough that she can see Eliot. “You’re sad.”

The man doesn’t say anything for a long time. “Don’t bother.” He says finally, his voice cracking. “I’m too broken.”

Hardison makes an alarmed little noise. “It’s worth a try.” He says. 

“Why do you care?”

Parker looks back at Hardison and meets his eyes. “Because you’re sad.” She says again. “And because I know what it’s like to be really sad and Hardison is good at taking care of people and maybe we can make things better together.”

Eliot doesn’t say anything, but he also doesn’t kick them out. Parker decides to count that as a win.


End file.
